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English Aristocratic Women, 1450-1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.420942
EAN: 9780195151282
ISBN: 0195151283
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: August 22, 2002
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Review:
Portraits of aristocratic women from the Yorkist and Tudor periods reveal elaborately clothed and bejeweled nobility, exemplars of their families' wealth. Unlike their male counterparts, their sitters have not been judged for their professional accomplishments. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara J. Harris argues that the roles of aristocratic wives, mothers, and widows constituted careers for women that had as much public and political significance and were as crucial for the survival and prosperity of their families and class as their husband's careers. Women, Harris demonstrates, were trained from an early age to manage their families' property and households; arrange the marriages and careers of their children; create, sustain, and exploit the client-patron relationships that were an essential element in politics at the regional and national levels; and, finally, manage the transmission and distribution of property from one generation to another, since most wives outlived their husbands.
English Aristocratic Women unveils the lives of noblewomen whose historical influence has previously been dismissed, as well as those who became favorites at the court of Henry VIII. Through extensive archival research of documents belonging to more than twelve hundred families, Harris paints a collective portrait of upper-class women of this period. By recognizing the full significance of the aristocratic women's careers, this book reinterprets the politics and gender relations of early modern England. Barbara J. Harris is Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her previous works include Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478-1521.
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Rating: - English Aristocratic Women, their Careers, and Patriarchy: An Investigation of a Modern Female Perspective
Dr. Barbara J. Harris' text, English Aristocratic Women 1450-1550, is an important contribution to the historical analysis of women's history and brings an innovative perspective to the debate of continuity and change within the history of women's studies. Dr. Harris redefines aristocratic women's familial, conjugal, social, and political activities in Yorkist and early Tudor England. Her primary investigation focuses on the utility of the female gentry in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth ... Read More
Rating: - A Truly Revealing and Enlightening Study
Barbara Harris', English Aristocratic Women from 1450-1550, sheds much needed light on the position of women in the rigid patriarchal society of Tudor England. Her primary thesis is that "aristocratic women gained wealth, authority, and power as they managed their husbands' property and households, arranged marriages and careers of their children, maintained and exploited kin and client networks essential to their families' political power, and supervised the transmission and distribution of property ... Read More
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